


What Am I Going to Do with You?

by spuffyduds



Category: due South
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Bodyswap, Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-13
Updated: 2010-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally started writing this for the ds_snippets prompts of "tiptoe, tingle, tattoo, trivia, tussle, turkey", but it got much too long for that community.</p>
    </blockquote>





	What Am I Going to Do with You?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally started writing this for the ds_snippets prompts of "tiptoe, tingle, tattoo, trivia, tussle, turkey", but it got much too long for that community.

Thank God Ray doesn't seem to feel the need to tiptoe around it, to pretend nothing's wrong, to make Fraser _say_ it: _Ray, I am apparently stuck in your body, is that you in mine?_

No, he throws open the consulate door, looks at Fraser, groans, "Voodoo? Witch? What?!?"

"No theories as of yet, Ray," Fraser says, then looks down from Ray's--his--_Ray's_ face, and blinks. "And, normally, I do not answer the door in just underpants."

"Yeah, well, normal this is not," Ray says.

"Granted."

*****************************************************

"So you think it was a combination of causes," Welsh says. He sounds very, very calm, which Fraser finds worrisome.

"We'd both gotten covered with powdered rhino horn when the warehouse blew--" Fraser says.

"And the holy water thing--" Ray rubs at his forehead, where the goose egg would be, if it were the right forehead still.

Fraser winces in sympathy. "The priest _did_ apologize. He lost track of who the poachers were, in the tussle."

"Naturally," Welsh says.

"Those fonts are _heavy_," Ray moans.

"Still," Fraser says, "some activating incantation should have been required." He frowns, or thinks he does; once or twice today he has checked the expressions on his new face in the precinct's bathroom mirror, and they're not at all what he intended. He doesn't have full control of the fine musculature as of yet.

"Incantation," Ray mutters. "Chanting. Waitaminute, there was--jump-rope!"

"Are we talking bondage, now?" Welsh says. "Please don't tell me about bondage."

"Ice cream soda, cherry on top, who's your boyfriend, I forgot!" Ray yells triumphantly, and Welsh puts his head down on the desk.

"Ah!" Fraser says. "Yes, of course--oh, _excellent_, Ray, the girls jumping rope in the church courtyard--that must be a mutation of a much older rhyme that actually had some occult power--"

"And then when the moon rose--" Ray says excitedly.

"Gentlemen," Welsh says, raising his head. "Thanksgiving is in three days. Please. I beg of you. Take those days off."

"I can't abandon my consulate post," Fraser says, and Welsh looks miserably at Ray's face that those words just came out of, and then looks miserably over at Ray, who has sprawled Fraser's body very Ray-ishly across Welsh's office couch with his mis-laced RCMP boots up on the cushions.

"You--he--whichever--yes, you _can_," Welsh says. "I'll speak to the Inspector. Eat turkey. Drink beer. Get lots of sleep. Become sane, and return to your duties only when you have done so."

********************************************************

Ray insists that they both stay at his apartment until it wears off. ("You are NOT going to tell Turnbull the truth, and I am NOT dealing with pretending to be you at _him_.") Fraser's worked out that the switch back should be on Friday, the first night of the dark of the moon.

Fraser tries to talk about other things, to ask Ray about a thousand different variations of poker and solitaire, to not think about the skin he's in. But their late-night conversations always drift back to the strangeness of the moment, to the endless peculiar trivia of operating the wrong body.

"I was really _clumsy_, that first day," Ray says. "Like when you're thirteen and suddenly your hands and feet get way too big and you're just--lumbering and tripping over stuff? Not--I mean, not that this is a clumsy body, it's--it's nice, I just wasn't. Used to it."

"I kept--exerting too much force for your weight, at first," Fraser says. "I would try to take a normal step and I would _bound_, like astronauts on the moon." (He doesn't say, "I woke up, that first night, and before I realized what had happened I saw your hand on the pillow, and I smelled you, and for just one lovely second I thought, finally, _finally_...")

"Heh," Ray says. "Bounding. Booooiiiiing."

"Yes."

********************************************************

Showering is torture. Fraser speeds through it, keeps the water almost cold to _encourage_ himself to speed through it; soaps with brusque efficiency, nearly rough. Anything more, anything like what he's thought, so often, of doing to this body, would be—-trespass, almost _assault_; Ray is certainly not able to say "no," Ray is in another _room_.

He can't quite bring himself to keep his eyes closed, though; can't keep from studying Ray's tattoo as he soaps it. And he can't quite suppress the full-body tingle he gets every time he washes his hair, no matter how briskly. (An addition to the growing list of things he doesn't say to Ray. "What an astonishingly sensitive scalp you have, Ray. Do you _usually_ get an erection every time you shampoo?")

He's in and out of the shower in under three minutes, and it's still almost more than he can bear.

Ray, he notices, has begun to take extraordinarily _long_ showers.

Fraser doesn't ask.

********************************

The last night before the hoped-for change back, they're still talking over the differences. Fraser admits to a moment of panic each morning at the sudden blurriness of the world, before he remembers and retrieves Ray's glasses from the guestroom nightstand.

"I don't get as _cold_, when I'm you," Ray says. "Less scrawny, I guess." Then adds, "But, buddy, I do not envy you the nose. Every smell is way stronger, and man, I don't know how you spend _any_ time around Dewey."

"It is not a high point of my day, admittedly."

"And it's not just _more_, it's--different, sometimes? " Ray says. "Most of the women at the station, and a couple of the guys, when they'd come up to me looking like you. They'd just smell _extra_ like they usually do, and then there'd suddenly be this...other...a really _rich_ kind of smell, on top of that. What's _that_ about?"

And Fraser has gotten too comfortable, chatting sleepily, full of the turkey he'd insisted on cooking. ("I know it's not my holiday, Ray, but it's yours, and it's a small repayment for your hospitality.") Too relaxed, fitting so perfectly into the Ray-shaped slump in the couch cushions. His guard is down, and he murmurs, "Oh, that's arousal."

Ray hasn't seemed to have any difficulties with the intricacies of facial musculature; his new face is, if anything, _more_ expressive with him running it. So when Fraser realizes what he just let slip, when his eyes fly open and he sits up straight, it's clear that Ray is horrified.

"You can--" Ray says. "You _knew_."

"Ray, don't--" Fraser says, but the door is slamming before he can get out, "leave."

*******************************************************

Ray doesn't come back until 3 a.m. Fraser is sitting, awake, on the couch, and after listening to the fumbling at the door for several minutes, gets up and lets him in.

"Tipsy," Ray says. "Stupid keys," and, avoiding Fraser's gaze, walks toward his bedroom.

"Tell me you didn't drive."

"Taxi. M'not stupid."

"I never thought you were."

Ray finally turns to look at him, sways a bit in place. "God," he says. "I thought I--you--this body--why're you such a fuckin' lightweight when you weigh more than me?"

Fraser takes a moment to sort through the apparent nonsense of this paradox, then says, "Oh, alcohol tolerance. Sheer lack of practice."

"Right. Okay." Ray scrubs a hand at his face, then looks hard at Fraser. "So, did you think it was funny? Or just pathetic?"

"What?"

"Me. Smelling like that. All the time. Around you. I do, don't I?"

Fraser has a moment of indecision, because thinking of Ray this miserable makes him need to fix it; but seeing his own face with that look, that face he used to see in the bathroom mirror, makes him want to say, "Stop whining." But--no, Ray, this is _Ray._

"Not funny. Or pathetic," Fraser says, softly. "It gave me some hope."

"What?"

"Me too," Fraser says, gathers his courage and walks close enough to put his arms around Ray, who looks at him suspiciously, then tucks his face into Fraser's shoulder, sniffs.

"Shit," Ray says. "I spilled some bourbon on my, your shirt, and the bar was smoky, and--I can't smell anything else right now."

"Trust me on this one," Fraser says.

"That doesn't make any sense. If you wanted, and you knew I wanted, why--"

"I wasn't sure--you looked worried by it, sometimes, and just because you wanted didn't mean that you _wanted_ to want, necessarily, and--"

"Y'mean," Ray says, smiling finally, leaning fully into him, warm and heavy, "you were scared."

Fraser marshals several arguments against this unfair assessment, reconsiders, says, "Yes."

He keeps his eyes closed, not wanting to be confused by his own face, just enjoying arms around him, breath on his neck, Ray's--oh, _lips_ on his neck, and that's--not right, not fair to Ray.

"Don't--" he says. "You're not fully cognizant of what you're doing, let's table this until the morning, when you can--"

"Table sounds good," Ray says, grabs the waistband of Fraser's jeans and starts steering him toward the kitchen. "And I'm not drunk, _you_ are."

Fraser opens his mouth to refute this entirely specious argument. Ray stops him with lips and tongue, and then Fraser's flat on his back and the table is wobbling under him and he's quite sure the ketchup bottle broke when it hit the floor and he doesn't care.

 

\--END--


End file.
